El exitoso columnista del New York Times Thomas Friedman publicó, en 2005, un provocador libro que tituló La Tierra es plana: breve historia del mundo globalizado del siglo XX. Impresionado por un viaje realizado a la ciudad de Bangalore, en la India, argumentaba que los procesos de globalización habían logrado tal alcance, que ahora era posible innovar sin necesidad de migrar. En consecuencia, concluía, "el mundo se había aplanado", por lo cual la distancia y la localización se convertían en factores totalmente secundarios para los procesos económicos actuales. Esa visión contrastaba con lo que ocurría dentro de las ciencias económicas y, en particular, con uno de sus campos de conocimiento: el de la economía urbana y regional, en el que la distancia, la localización y en general la dimensión espacial de los fenómenos económicos es central para comprender la forma en que operan los procesos de crecimiento y desarrollo.

Current economic thinking argues that the ability of cities to create wealth depends on agglomeration economies, relating to the geographic concentration of industries and people which interact to create enterprise, employment and growth. This book finds that the quality of local services significantly influences the productivity and economic development of a city and the ability of firms to contribute to wealth. The study is based on surveys conducted in five cities: Belo Horizonte in Brazil, Montreal in Canada, Puebla in Mexico, San Josâ in Costa Rica and San Salvador in El Salvador.

The book spans a scientific research program elegantly developed by Roberto Camagni, an eminent regional scientist, who has offered ground-breaking ideas in regional and urban economics throughout his academic career. In addition to bringing together a selection of Professor Camagni’s most influential works, the book presents syntheses and interpretations of his ideas by respected colleagues and by his students. In regional economics, space as territory, which plays an active role in innovation processes and in regional growth patterns; territorial capital as a synthetic concept of differentiated regional growth assets; and sources of regional competitiveness are only a few of the main ideas that emerged in regional economics thanks to this inspiring mind. In urban economics, he paved the way towards a new theoretical interpretation of the existence of the city and of its dynamics. His theory of city networks overcame the limits of Christaller’s and Lösch’s spatial approach to the city, with a solid economic conceptualization of spatial city network structures. All theories are accompanied by sound policy analysis, helping to contribute to the design and implementation of appropriate spatial policies at the European level.

Spatial planning is a significant part of geosciences that is developing very rapidly. Many new methods and modeling techniques like GIS (Geographical Information Systems), GPS (Global Positioning Systems) or remote sensing techniques have been developed and applied in various aspects of spatial planning. The chapters collected in this book present an excellent profile of the current state of theories, data, analysis methods and modeling techniques used in several case studies. The book is divided into three main parts (Theoretical aspects of spatial planning, Quantitative and computer spatial planning methods and Practical applications of spatial planning) that cover the latest advances in urban, city and spatial planning. The book also shows different aspects of spatial planning and different approaches to case studies in several countries.

"The one source that sets reference collections on Latin American studies apart from all other geographic areas of the world.... The Handbook has provided scholars interested in Latin America with a bibliographical source of a quality unavailable to scholars in most other branches of area studies." —Latin American Research Review Beginning with volume 41 (1979), the University of Texas Press became the publisher of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, the most comprehensive annual bibliography in the field. Compiled by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and annotated by a corps of more than 140 specialists in various disciplines, the Handbook alternates from year to year between social sciences and humanities. The Handbook annotates works on Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the Guianas, Spanish South America, and Brazil, as well as materials covering Latin America as a whole. Most of the subsections are preceded by introductory essays that serve as biannual evaluations of the literature and research under way in specialized areas. The Handbook of Latin American Studies is the oldest continuing reference work in the field. Lawrence Boudon, of the Library of Congress Hispanic Division, has been the editor since 2000, and Katherine D. McCann has been assistant editor since 1999. The subject categories for Volume 61 are as follows: AnthropologyEconomicsGeographyGovernment and PoliticsPolitical EconomyInternational RelationsSociology